DIY Legal Kits

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What is a DIY Kit?

This page is a collection of resources that described themselves as a kit or a manual and suitable for the community to use without a lawyer.

Do not just use this page though. There is more information on all of these topics elsewhere within Foolkit. We encourage you to look at the Public and Lawyers pages before taking action yourself. Particularly where we have a collection of other sources of information.

Should you Do It Yourself?

Lawyers make a lot of money from people who try and "Do It Yourself".

It can be very difficult, if not impossible, to extract some of these people from the situations they get themselves into. The saddest cases are those involving Will Kits.

While lawyers are making money from this, they are not happy. Your dentist wishes you ate apples rather than sweets and had healthy teeth. Lawyers wish that their clients would not take unnecessary risks and would ask for advice before they get themselves into more trouble.

Unlike DIY kits, lawyers charge very little for their ink and paper. Most legal costs are for the expertise and time in making sure that you are doing the best thing, have the most appropriate document, that it is tailored to your requirements and that all of the details are attended to. They may suggest a better way to achieve your objectives.

Foolkit does not endorse the DIY resources on this Web site. It is for the user to make their own decision about whether to DIY or not.Foolkit has no responsibility for the quality of these resources and whether or not they are up-to-date.

If your are unsure whether or not you should DIY then you should seek professional advice. In a short interview with a lawyer they can tell you whether or not your matter is straightforward and suitable for DIY.

Factors you should weigh up include:

What is at risk? Is it a lot of money or potentially time in jail or a criminal conviction? Could you live with the consequences if it went wrong?

How complex is it? Typically, if you can't say it in one sentence then it is not simple.

Is it something that the Government encourages you to do yourself? Or is it just the DIY web sites that encourage this.

How much will you save? Include in this your own time and the extent to which you may be a worrier.

Court Cases

A good guide as to whether or not you should try to conduct a court case yourself is to look at the web site of the Court.

If they have pages, guides or videos written especially for the public who want to run their own case, then this indicates that they have a lot of people who try to do this.

If they don't have those items, then there are probably few people who attempt to conduct this sort of case themselves.

To clear up any doubt about this you might like to speak to the court staff. They won't give you legal advice, but they can talk in general terms about how people manage in their courts and what issues they run into.